While the autumnal anime season hasn’t offered the massive dose of animation loveliness that the summer gave us, it has given me an anime about microbiology and this, an anime about game mechanics and probabilities. So it’s not all bad.
After 2005’s Akagi, Madhouse have assembled pretty much the same team to create an anime of Akagi creator Nobuyuki Fukumoto’s gambling manga Kaiji. Whereas Akagi’s title character was a cold fish, a man who could calmly bluff and cheat in the face of death, a genius at the game of mahjong, Kaiji’s title character is an emotional loser who finds himself thrust into a gambling tournament aimed the most desperate of competitors.
Kaiji, you see, foolishly co-signed a loan made to a former co-worker. This loan was made by the yakuza, and now they want their money back and can’t find the co-worker. Kaiji is given the option of paying it back over 10 years at a rate he can’t afford, or go on the ship Espoir and take part in the gambling tournament that takes place on there. If he wins, he clears the debt and gets to keep whatever else he wins. If he loses, he’ll be taken to parts unknown and made to work hard labour for a year. Or at least that’s what he’s told.
As a series about a man paying back a loan over 10 years would not be that exciting, Kaiji chooses Espoir, and finds himself taking part in a game of Restricted Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Restricted Rock, Paper, Scissors. This is now my dream anime.
Kaiji (manga) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The game featured in the gambling tournament the first night Kaiji spends on Espoir, with an average survival rate of 50%. The rules were outlined after the issuing of war funds, which were done in 2,000,000Â¥ and 10,000,000Â¥ increments referred to as the “lower” and “upper” bound, respectively. The money was in effect a loan, equalling the debt of the contestant and compounded at 1.5% every ten minutes for the four hour voyage; contestants who hold onto their funds for the length of the trip would have to pay 140% of what they invested, thus putting an incentive to finish games early. Money that exceeded the amount needed to repay the loan to the Espoir hosts would be pocketed by the contestant. This gamble is similar to the original game but with a twist – the hand gestures are represented by cards, and contestants are given four cards each with the same gesture for a total of twelve. Contestants are also given three plastic stars as collateral to bet on each round of play – whenever one loses a round, the winner gets a star from the loser. To survive the night, contestants must maintain their three star pendants and lose all of their gesture cards, while earning enough money to repay the interest owed to the Espoir hosts. Cards cannot be destroyed or thrown away, to do so is subject to instant disqualification. Unofficially, however, the star pendants can be traded using the war funds for around one or two million yen each, and they are typically how contestants manage to meet the interest demands of the Espoir hosts.
What makes this series great is how Kaiji’s mind works to find the way through the rules of the game, to find the best chance of surviving. At first glance the rules seem very constraining, but as desperation rises, Kaiji starts to see loopholes in the rules, and the clues in the game that will allow him to determine the best odds. As someone who can spend hours getting lost in the mechanics, logic and probability of games, I loved this. It will be interesting to see if Fukumoto’s story keeps this theme up throughout the series.
The animation improves on the standard set by Akagi. While it’s probably not everyone’s cup of tea, particularly those who only want the big eyes/small mouth look of “typical” anime, Yuzo Sato brings Fukumoto’s unique look to screen with aplomb. I hope that this and Akagi will be big enough successes that people will follow the lead of their characters and gamble on adapting other seinen series with unique visual styles, rather than the seinen moe series adaptations that seem to be the norm nowadays.